Perspective & Lensing
The Memory Game #1
I’ve been binging the Rory Sutherland Modern Wisdom episodes this week, and despite his incessant interrupting of Chris, he is an exceptionally good podcast guest.
A common thread in his ethos is the possibility of ‘marketing magic’ which is less plausible in truth-oriented fields. He talks about how perspective shifts and ‘reframing’ of situations can entirely alter the customer experience. In other words, you can change how someone feels about a product or service without actually changing it. Let me give you an Uber example:
2010: You book a taxi by phone or text. You don’t know exactly when it’s going to come, or really if it’s going to come. You don’t know whether to wait outside in the rain in case it’s 2 minutes early, or stay there when it’s 2 minutes late. Did you give the right address, at the right time? Did you call the right number? 5 minutes late now… do I book another one? Oh. Here it is.
2020: You order an Uber to your location. You track it all the way and can see it has stopped at a few traffic lights. You are hardly bothered when it turns up a few minutes late. But why? The situation is identical, the taxi is 5 minutes late and has been stopped by the same lights as a decade earlier.
Information is the key. The availability of the live map has drastically improved the waiting time experience and thus perceived value of the service. With the help of this feature, Uber is now so synonymous with getting a cab that it has become a verb! In this case, I will admit that the trick is closer to engineering than marketing genius, but I believe it portrays the point rather well. In essence; things are not what they are, they are what we think they are. Harnessing this fact can give some serious leverage in the world of business.
Rory also likes to explore the frames in which we problem-solve. I believe this approach is more analogous to the employees of a company rather than its customers. Despite it’s part-discontinuation, HS2 is a good example. Let an engineering and marketing person plan the project and they will ask two very different questions:
Engineer: How do you transport x people over y miles within a time of t?
Marketer: How do you make the train service between Manchester and London so good that people feel stupid driving?
The marketer asks a much better question. It is about more than just speed. Comfort, connectivity, catering, seating options… these all matter too. I am not suggesting that the project would be possible without the engineers, but instead that it is not just an engineering problem. A combination of frames are required to find an optimal solution. For a while now, I’ve had a similar idea I call ‘lensing’ which has implications in not just business but life.
Take your current worldview. Given the genetic and environmental biases which have formed all of your values and opinions up to now, is there any feasible chance that the lens through which you see life matches your vision? Do the glasses you’re wearing fit the prescription? From a purely probabilistic point of view, the answer is no. You owe it to yourself to openly explore different problem solving techniques, political opinions, cuisines, hobbies, holiday destinations and even worldviews to find the resonant frequency of your best life.
What shade are your rose-tinted glasses?
Word of the Week: Serendipitous
Occurring or discovered by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
Quote of the Week: “Every City Whispers something different to you”
This quote is an idea derived from one of Paul Graham's short essays Cities and Ambition. It’s worth a read as is much of his work. It reminded me of how much I can’t wait to travel and, in the theme of lensing, gave me a thought which I’ll leave you with… which city whispers in your voice? Go find out!
See you next week, Tommo x